


When Golden Goes Grey

by Shirokokuro



Series: If That Happens, I'll Catch You [9]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Gore, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, I like talking about farms too much, Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences, Tim Drake is Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 15:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19726231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shirokokuro/pseuds/Shirokokuro
Summary: There aren’t many things that Tim is afraid of. He’s been through this before once, early on as Robin. He and asphyxia are old friends, so the dry click of his trachea as his lungs heave for more oxygen that simply isn’t there—It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. It’s not what he’s afraid of.(Title derived from Joanna Newsom's "Peach, Plum, Pear")





	When Golden Goes Grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rookblonkorules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rookblonkorules/gifts).



> *slithers out from under rock* Hello, Rook! I can't believe it's almost been a year since you put this idea in my head--It's finally finished! I hope you enjoy it. <3
> 
> Comic references for those who are interested are Robin #5, Robin #159, and Identity Crisis #5.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences

“Code ten on channel three. Available officers please report.”

“Mark Eight, code ten, go ahead.”

“Tricorner on Second, reported eleven-six, building collapse, break—"

* * *

_A few glasses sound in the distance, the scent of alcohol and expensive food drifting through the room. Even considering his new status, this kind of upper-class restaurant isn’t the sort of thing Tim Drake is used to. For Tim Wayne, though, it’s something expected. Still uncomfortable but…expected._

_“What’s it like?”_

_Tim’s attention is pulled from a neighboring table to refocus on the girl in front of him. A calculating flash shines in Zo’s eyes. She’s been dancing around the topic in polite a way as possible for the past few minutes, but Tim knows what she’s been meaning to ask._

_“What’s it like—being adopted, I mean?”_

_Tim picks at his food with his fork, trying to phrase his answer in the best way he can. The best way for his parents, the best way for Bruce, for himself. Life’s become so complicated anymore._

_“It’s pretty weird, I guess...” He hesitates. “No, I_ know _it’s pretty weird. My parents will always be my parents. But Bruce. He was a father figure to me in a lot of ways before both my parents...”_

_A glint of metal, deadened eyes, cold skin._

_Tim bites back the memory. It’s been over a year, but it still feels like Dad’s death was just yesterday, like he could pull out his phone and replay the same conversation they’d shared as if Dad were still alive and…_

_He was really trying at the end. Maybe he and Tim—Maybe they could’ve gotten things back on track. Maybe if they’d had a bit more time._

_But that’s all their relationship is anymore._

_“Maybe.”_

_A question mark lost in dark days. Unanswered calls from Dick. Flipping through scrapbooks only to find there isn’t much evidence that Tim and Dad even existed in the same universe, let alone the same family. There weren’t much memories. Aren’t much memories._

_Then there was Steph, and Conner…._

_At the end of the day, Bruce is the only stable thing Tim has. Maybe Tim’s the same for Bruce: stable. He’ll never know, though, because with Bruce, it’s always “maybe” too._

_Until recently._

_Zo’s eyes flash again, have picked up on the fact that Tim is uncomfortable. She’s shifted a bit as if to change the topic, but Tim continues before she can. “So, having Bruce adopt me—when everything was going so lousy in my life—mostly, it just... It made me feel wanted, made me feel good.”_

* * *

A series of clipped coughs pull Tim back to consciousness, drag him back to himself. Where he’s back to, though, Tim can’t remember.

The world is dissolved in acidic shadows that shift slick as ice while he’s trapped underneath. It’s a fanciful thought, something brought about by dull throbs and a world drowned in black, but Tim thinks that’s really where he is: He’s floating somewhere in aqueous space, surrounded by water that amplifies a distant sprinkling noise, shuffling and echoing like something swimming past him. _It’s water_ , Tim thinks. Only…there’s no humid thickness that accompanies water, just dust in his throat like he’s only breathing dirt, like soot’s settling thick on clammy skin and he’s—

He’s running out of air.

That’s when it hits. Whatever things swimming by him are falling, silt shaken loose from above him and pelting the ground in sizzling cracks. There isn’t any light, because there _is_ no light; nothing’s shining through the ceiling above him, one made of rocks and debris from the cave-in he’s only vaguely recalling.

One of the buildings… The foundation was still unstable from the earthquake two years ago. Trying to stop someone, had a hostage and set charges, and Tim—He was barely able to calculate a place that might hold up before the whole building went down.

The detective part of him is demanding to find out the size of the pocket he’s in, tabulate how much air he’s got left, but his body says it’s more pressing to check himself over first. His back stings like fire. His head aches too, and maybe his leg… He can’t really tell anymore. To be honest, there’s not much that Tim _can_ tell. He’s on his back, his brain registers, gathers as much with the earth matting his hair and sitting cold against the cuts of his uniform. There’s something sticky growing up around the open patches, and Tim already has a feeling what it is.

He’s alive, though.

He’ll take what he can get.

Tim moves a hand to his forehead, the only signs of the motion the pinch of Kevlar at his elbow and the chill of his glove against bare skin. A finger shifts to his earwig, and his sight crackles in monochrome bars as the night-vision flickers on. The new array of green and black is an improvement of sorts, would be if it revealed good things, but no.

It’s warning him that this is bad. There’s two feet of clearance above his head, just enough to sit up and nothing more. The ceiling is a patchwork of beams, the groaning metal cradling untold pounds of rocks like a guillotine that’s waiting to come crashing down. It’ll hold for a while, though. It has to.

Tim swivels his head from where he’s on his back, not daring to move too much in case the structure’s still temperamental. He’s close to the exit on the west side. He remembers as much, and the tracker on his uniform—

Tim’s hand finds its way to the “R” emblem on his chest. It’s still in one piece. Bruce will know where he is. He just has to wait it out.

A set of fingers slip down to the ground, enough for the teen to push himself up and get better vantage. It’s in the middle of that shift that a sharp sting rockets down his body straight into his toes. There’s a faint tension there that Tim doesn’t like, mixed in somewhere between the hazy pain and the question of how much time has passed. His vision flickers to where his leg is. It’s a battle to keep his eyes pinned there, because a sizeable gash is torn through the muscle, a mesh of flesh and paper-white bone that beams beryl in the night-vision. Tim would say the wound’s a field day for Alfred, but euphemisms don’t sit right when it’s his body that he’s getting a peek inside of. It’s enough to make his stomach churn.

Tim’s head finds its way back to the floor again, trying to arrange thoughts into a plan, but they’re flickering past too vividly, too quick. There’s a brightness to them that hurts, and Tim’s not sure if trying his comm or treating his leg should be the first order of business. Another bought of coughs tell him that his air-filter is a good place to start. It takes some careful finagling with his belt, but a mask eventually slips over his face. _Don’t panic,_ he reminds himself. _Limited air. Hyperventilation won’t help with that._

Nothing seems to be helping anyway.

His comm is useless when he tries it ( _Buried under too much rubble_.), and twisting a tourniquet around his thigh has Tim’s head spinning. In the end, all that’s happened is that he’s swapped bleeding out for being even more lightheaded, and he’s getting cold fast.

That’s what they don’t tell you.

When oxygen’s running thin, when you’re under piles of dirt and stuck in a stage of passing out, the air turns gelid. Like standing on a mountain. Like lying in snow. The chill is freezing a path through the sweat beading along Tim’s skin. There’s too much of it, actually—the sweat. More than normal, and his stomach’s clenching with nausea, too.

Tim knows those signs, but there’s nothing he can do. None that he can think of, anyway. It’s getting hard just to string ideas together, all thoughts clashing like a Newton’s cradle, back and forth, back and forth. Tim makes a conscious attempt to count the heartbeats sounding in his stomach, more backs and forths, and he blinks and sees Dad for a second—

(“I worry about you, Tim.”)

—before the man’s gone again, leaving Tim with snagged breath. He’s pinning all his focus on a crevice in the ceiling where two rocks are acting as keystones above the beams, uses the visual to ground him while he gets his breathing under control again. He needs his inhales to be shallow and steady. Just enough to fill his lungs. But his lungs aren’t filling. Not enough. Not at all. A haze is haloing his peripherals now, and his back aches and aches on the uneven rocks below him. The pain in his leg is getting unbearable.

There aren’t many things that Tim is afraid of. He’s been through this before once, early on as Robin. He and asphyxia are old friends, so the dry click of his trachea as his lungs heave for more oxygen that simply isn’t there—It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. It’s not what he’s afraid of.

What Tim’s afraid of is the combination. It’s being alone. Being trapped. The uncertainty of what will do him in first is eating him alive, and really, the slowness of it is the worst part. It’s just him and his thoughts. The sound of labored breaths are heavy in his ears, the occasional shuffle of debris. There’s just… There’s not much to steady him here. All he has are regrets that saunter through his brain. He thinks of Dick for a minute, mourns the fact he won’t be able to crack another joke with him or shoot the breeze late at night when crime is low. Alfred comes up too, the Titans. They probably won’t find out until morning what happened. It might take that long for Bruce to find him, and…

Bruce.

This would be the second Robin he’s lost.

Distantly, Tim feels a spark of dread kindle in him. He knows he should stay awake. _Keep measuring your heartrate_ , the weaker, more resilient part of him demands. _You’ll let Bruce down if you die here._

But then Dad’s voice slips into his head again, closer than last time.

(“Maybe it’d be better if you stayed in tonight.”)

And that sounds nice.

Tim misses him—Dad, and it’s cold here. Dark. He wants to go home.

A cloud of dirt streams down to the ground. It slips right past his head, but instead of dust hitting rock, it sounds more like a rustle through grass, through leaves. It’s odd. He can feel his mind drifting, losing track of injuries and common sense, but Tim’s still surprised when his vision whites out, blanks, and softens to somewhere brighter.

A wind is on his face, Tim realizes vaguely, the comfortable kind that comes on hot summer days, and the sun’s out, a white disc in a blue sky. Maybe it really is summer. That’s what it looks like, feels like. He remembers Smallville this way.

That’s where Tim is now, he thinks, sitting upright on the fence outside the wheat field of the Kent family farm. The wood’s pricking the backs of his thighs through the jeans he’s wearing—what he’d been wearing back then.

Tim’s been here once before. On a summer between a mission with the Titans. It was August at the time. Must be the same now too. Everything looks identical, preserved: The wheat’s about ready for harvest, tall and gold and smelling of soil while the apple orchard lining the horizon is shaking a brilliant green in the breeze. Krypto is rolling in the dirt at Tim’s feet.

“Think I’m gonna have to give him another bath,” a voice laments from Tim’s left.

It’s no surprise Conner’s here. He was here that summer last year as well—before things went south for the both of them. Tim doesn’t take his eyes off the dog that’s squirming happily on his back, all floppy ears and a wagging tail. His fur is ruined.

“Probably,” Tim agrees after another minute. The sunbeams are bright on his face, something the teen’s enjoying, and if Tim really were here, if this really were the memory he recalls, he and Kon would wander back to the farmhouse in another hour or two where Ma Kent would be rolling out dough for some pastry or another that she’s been wanting to try for years, has just been needing more people in the house with eager stomachs—as she put it, and later that night, Tim would glance in the vanity of the small half-bath to find more freckles on his nose than he remembers having before he came.

At least, that’s how the memory goes, anyway.

“I’ve missed you,” Tim admits quietly. “All of you.”

He’s still watching Krypto. The dog snorts some of the dirt off his snout before bolting into the wheat with a happy bark. Stalks swallow him up like a sea, the tops glinting richly in the sun until the whole field’s nothing more than a golden haze of heat and earth. The sky looks so wonderfully blue.

“We’ve missed you too, Tim.”

Kon’s speaking for a lot of people when he says that—Mom and Dad, maybe. The fallen heroes, fallen comrades. People Tim couldn’t save but almost did. They all come through the sonorous voice of Tim’s best friend. He sounds just like Superman, Tim muses quietly, when he talks like that.

Krypto yips from out of sight.

“What are you gonna do?” Kon asks, leaning forward a bit as he anticipates his dog tumbling back out. Tim’s doing the same, but now he can see his friend in his peripherals from the shift. He hasn’t aged a day.

“You can go back, if you want,” Kon poses, affect calm. “Or you can stay here. Either way.”

Tim stalls by moving his hands beneath his thighs to take the brunt of the wood splinters. His calf hurts for some reason. “I have a choice…?”

Kon nods slowly, a verbal ellipsis in the conversation. A bird chirps as it flits down to sit on the street wire running the length of the road behind them. Other than that, the only thing Tim can hear is the wind through the fields. He can’t even hear himself breathing.

Krypto reemerges sometime later. His coat is covered in pastoral detritus, chunks of leaves and wheat kernels. They all crinkle when the dog shakes them off and starts trotting back to the farmhouse. When Tim’s eyes follow the path, he notices Ma Kent’s on the front porch. She’s waving at the three of them with a smile on her face.

Kon slides off the fence. It’s the first time Tim’s really looked at him since he’s been here. “Do you want to stay for dinner?” his friend offers, wiping the dirt from his palms.

Tim wants to stay. He wants to so much it hurts. The teen can already smell bread and jam through the open kitchen window, the house, barn, and silo all fogged from a light that’s dusting the air, and time runs differently here, like everything stays the same, is pristine and perfect, and each day that follows is much like the last. “What do you think I should do?”

Kon’s already heading toward the house, walking backwards to keep eye contact with Tim, and it makes his steps stilted on the dirt path. “I think someone wants you,” is all he says before turning.

Tim can’t think of anything to say in reply. He’s still sitting on the fence, watching the back of his best friend as the young man tracks dirt up the white porch steps, and there’s a tug at Tim’s navel, a pull that’s telling him he has to make a decision. The teen forces his gaze back forward like the field will have the solution. Stalks continue to sway in the wind, the trees too. It’s so peaceful here.

That’s when the bird on the wire chirps again, a stubborn reminder. There’s a flap of wings as it takes off and rides the wind.

Tim doesn’t need to turn.

He already knows what kind of bird it is.

The teen takes a small breath, tries to remember this place so he can take it back with him. The smell of the dirt, the heat of the sun, the sound of the breeze. He never wants to leave, wants to stay with someone who knows him better than anyone, but Tim slides off the fence anyway.

He has to go back. For the people still left behind.

Tim’s feet hit the ground, and by the time he’s looked back up, the gold of the field flashes. It intensifies to the point where its blinding, burning, and makes Tim snap his eyes closed. He backpedals once, losing a grip on gravity, and all sensations fade out until Tim’s back hits ground again.

The shock of it jars his chest. His leg, his spine, his head—It all burns, makes him grit his teeth. The pain spikes when his lungs pitch forward, clamor for air, because somewhere along the line his breath was ripped out of him and he’s choking on the need to replace it all at once.

“Robin—!” someone’s yelling, desperate and thunderous. The voice sounds so familiar, and everything hurts so much that Tim latches onto it, utilizes it and doesn’t let himself slip back down. “Robin, look at me!”

An order.

Tim forces his eyes open. Winces when his pupils shrink, because his mask is gone. Everything’s so fuzzy and painful, but certain things come into view. A grey, starless sky. Tops of buildings that huddle around him. Tim’s not in the air pocket anymore. Probably nearby above ground. He can see smoke billowing in the sky overhead from what was likely the building collapse. A brume of blue and red lights flash along the plume, limn Tim’s sight from where he’s on his back on concrete. Police. Ambulances. The siren whirs are coming in clearer now, and Tim listens to them as they fade in and out. The chill of the night is soporific.

“Robin!” repeats the voice from earlier, more urgent. It hurts the back of his eyes to do it, but Tim forces them to roll in the direction of the speaker. The multifarious angles of light cut Bruce’s face in two from where he’s leaning over Tim, one half of him dark, one half light, and the lit half is broken by red and blue contours that underline the tenseness of his jaw. Soot is splashed along the bone there as if Bruce has been digging through rubble.

The man inhales funny when Tim looks at him, something like a shudder as if he’s been stabbed through the chest. Tim’s never heard Bruce make a sound like that. He thinks there’s something wrong, but his mouth doesn’t work right when he tries to ask.

Bruce’s face twists when Tim attempts to. “Don’t!” the man snaps, timbre too high, panicky and sharp. It makes Tim flinch instinctively. Bruce must notice he doesn’t sound like himself also, as the man repeats his order, probably going for calm but hitting closer to begging. “Don’t—” Bruce swallows, shaking his head. “—Don’t do that.”

Tim still wants to ask what’s wrong, though. Something obviously is, because Bruce’s hands have been hovering over Tim’s torso like he’s not sure where to touch without hurting him. Everything already does, though—hurt—each injury on the bend to fading into sleep. The crisis is one that Bruce must get over quickly, as a few seconds later, Tim registers a forearm wedging beneath his shoulders. Shifting the muscle, the bones. Tim holds his breath in anticipation of Bruce sliding a hand under his knees, waits for the throb in his calf to start anew.

Despite the semi-conscious haze, it remains a surprise when Bruce’s shadow crumples over him instead.

The man doesn’t say anything, just presses Tim close under his chin, weaves fingers through the hair on the back of the teen’s head to steady him. Tim can feel each exhale from that perspective, uneven and shaking beneath Bruce’s ribs, beneath Kevlar and other things that are supposed to be bulletproof. The raw emotion is unsettling.

Tim’s too exhausted to move, however. He’s still trying to piece things together, to draw up something to say or do, but his mind isn’t obeying him, his body either. He’s so cold, even with the proximity, and everything floats away too fast, helium thoughts. Tim’s eyes are already slipping back shut. The faint strain of muscles in his back untenses, goes limp. The whir of the sirens fades out. The pain too. All that’s left is the sound of Bruce’s breath hitching in the distant quiet.

“I thought I’d lost you.”


End file.
